By DONALD DeMARCO
Light in Winter is the title of the second volume of Meriol Trevor’s definitive biography of John Henry Newman. It may have been a source of considerable inspiration, if not grace, for Miss Trevor to have written the biography while living in one of the cottages at Littlemore, Newman’s original retreat, where he prayed, fasted, and studied before being received into the Catholic Church in 1845.
St. John Henry Newman’s great work was to shed light in a darkened world. “Light,” for one of the Church’s more recently canonized saints, is theological, helping to clarify the reality of God and the teachings of the Church, as well as philosophical, illuminating the proper object of the intellect, which is Truth.
Newman’s life spanned the nineteenth century, from 1801 to 1890. Bishop Clifford, who, as a student in Rome had served Newman’s first Mass, preached at the cardinal’s funeral service. One sentence in the eulogy perfectly epitomized Newman’s life: “God, in His tender mercy towards this land, chose him for a special work and endowed him with gifts especially fitting him for that work.”
“Light” and “work” were intimately intertwined throughout Newman’s career. In 1832, while in Castrogiovanni, Sicily, Newman had a severe attack of fever and nearly died. In fact, he was so convinced that he was going to die that he made final arrangements with his Italian servant. The illness kept him in bed for three weeks.
Nonetheless, in a memorandum describing his sickness, which he wrote years later, he stated: “As I lay in bed the first day, many thoughts came over me….I felt and kept saying to myself, ‘I have not sinned against the light’….God has still a work for me to do.”
Indeed, as it turned out, God had a great deal of work for Newman to do.
When Newman’s condition had greatly improved, he left Sicily on a boat bound for Marseilles. But his ship was becalmed for an entire week between Corsica and Sardinia in the Straits of Bonifacio. It was on this occasion that Newman penned his most endearing poem, which begins as follows: “Lead Kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, / Lead Thou me on / The Night is dark, and I am far from home — Lead Thou me on.”
The poem brings to mind several things: Newman’s own loneliness, depressed spirit, and homesickness, as well as the gloom of the world, the darkness of man’s intellect, and the eclipse of God. The enveloping multi-leveled darkness moved Newman to recognize, with great emotional force, both the necessity and the compelling significance of light. It was an experience that would remain with him for a lifetime.
Newman was utterly convinced that because he had not sinned against the light, God had an important work for him to perform. Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical, Aeterni Patris, had denounced intellectual sins against the light, while urging his readers to dispel the darkness of error. Gerald Phelan, who supervised the French to English translation of Jacques Maritain’s classic The Degrees of Knowledge, stated that the cause of the malady afflicting the modern mind “is a suicidal decision of philosophers to disown completely the proper function of the intelligence and to place as the first condition of all knowledge an initial sin against the light.”
Newman’s canonization is a strong affirmation of the importance of philosophy and, one hopes, will encourage many to follow his example. At the close of his book, On the Scope and Nature of University Education, he had these parting words for his readers: “What I would urge upon every one, whatever may be his particular line of research, — what I would urge upon men of science in their thoughts of Theology, — what I would venture to recommend to theologians, when their attention is drawn to the subject of scientific investigations, — is a great and firm belief in the sovereignty of Truth.”
The “sovereignty of Truth” is an elegant phrase. It stands along with Cor ad Cor loquitur (“Heart speaking to Heart,” the motto which Newman took adopted when he was made cardinal) as capturing in a minimum of words, the essence of Newman’s mind and heart.
The Idea of a University is Newman’s most popular work. For Newman, the cultivation of a gentleman is not the same thing as the development of a Christian. In the absence of theology, education is radically incomplete. The mere gentleman, important as he is in his own right, is ill-suited to deal with the temptations of the world.
Newman is considered to be, in addition to his many other gifts, a literary genius. We find numerous examples of literary eloquence throughout the pages of The Idea of a University. In pointing out the difficulty in establishing honest communication with certain people, he has this to say:
“Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk; then you may hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man.” By no means was Newman a cynic. But he was not naive about the difficulties in communicating with certain individuals. Martin Buber has remarked that the inability to communicate “is the most acute symptom of the pathology of our time.
St. John Henry Newman was canonized on October 13, 2019 before an estimated 20,000 pilgrims. He is the first Briton to be so honored in 43 years. On that occasion, Prince Charles accurately described him as a “fearless defender of the truth.” St. Newman is most assuredly a saint for our troubled times. He is a beacon of light for our darkening winter.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a professor emeritus of St. Jerome’s University and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College and Seminary. He is a regular columnist for the St. Austin Review. His latest books, How to Navigate Through Life and Apostles of the Culture of Life, are posted on amazon.com.)
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